Ratings Key

★★★★ = Excellent. The best the genre has to offer.★★★1/2 = Very Good. Perhaps not "perfect," but undoubtedly a must-see.★★★ = Good. Accomplishes what it sets out to do and does it well.★★1/2 = Fair. Clearly flawed and nothing spectacular, but competently made. OK entertainment.★★ = Mediocre. Either highly uneven or by-the-numbers and uninspired.★1/2 = Bad. Very little to recommend.★ = Very Bad. An absolute chore to sit through.NO STARS! = Abysmal. Unwatchable dreck that isn't even bad-movie amusing.SBIG = So Bad It's Good. Technically awful movies with massive entertainment value.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Zûmu in: Bôkô danchi (1980)

... aka: Zoom In: Sex Apartments
... aka: Zoom In: Rape Apartments

Directed by:Naosuke Kurosawa

Saeko (Erina Miyai) is having a very
eventful day. In the morning, her competitive cyclist husband Kôchi (Toshikatsu
Matsukaze) wants a quickie before he heads out the door on an extended
trip. In the afternoon, she's riding her bike through a vacant lot when
someone throws a rock into her wheel spokes and makes her crash. The
rock-thrower - decked out in a black trench coat, black pants, black
toboggan and black leather gloves - then bends her over and rapes her.
Strangely only slightly disturbed by the attack, Saeko makes her way to an
apartment house to meet up with Takaya (Keijirô Shiga), an ex-lover
she hasn't seen in five years. The two had bumped into each other aboard a
train a week earlier, he sent her a key to his apartment and there she is.
It isn't long before the two are rekindling things. After having sex
(twice), Takaya
confesses to Saeko that, when she left him for the other guy; "I wanted
to kill you so badly." Considering Takaya wears the same exact outfit and
gloves as a psycho who's recently been killing women in the same area and brandishes the same assault weapon (a "hammer felt
picker;" basically a needle with a handle used to tune pianos), he may not be kidding about the killing part...

Immediately after Takaya arrives on the scene, the
currently-under-construction Kibougahara high rise apartment complex is
haunted by a psycho arsonist who gets his jollies raping, torturing and
murdering young women. The first victim is a schoolgirl who gets her eye
gouged out before the killer strips her naked, stuffs a
gasoline-soaked rag up her vagina and then sets it on fire. Yow! The next
woman's dead mutilated body is discovered strewn in a jungle gym. Saeko
begins to suspect Takaya may be the culprit, but continues her passionate
affair with him. In fact, deep down inside she may actually be
turned on by the fact he's nuts. Despite news bulletins
recommending women in the area not go out alone, women continue to, anyway. A
third victim is assaulted inside a vacant unit, where the killer strips
her, knocks out her teeth, forces her to perform oral sex on him and then
takes a blowtorch to her privates. Saeko goes to visit her married
girlfriend Sachi (Yôko Azusa) for comfort and ends up getting
comforted all right... by both Sachi and her husband (Ren Seidô). There's also a
mentally-disturbed young homeless girl (Yûkô
Osaki) lurking around who seems to be
obsessed with Takaya and hides in a garbage dump masturbating while
watching the killer incinerating another naked woman alive (!!)

Pleasant stuff this is not, but it's actually not as disturbing and
outrageous as it probably sounds. Part of that is due to Japan's ban on
showing pubic hair and full frontal nudity, which keeps the sex and
genital mutilations a bit less explicit than what one may see in an American
or European counterpart. Another reason is that it refuses to tap into the
psychology of its characters enough to really get under one's skin. Sure, the
attack scenes are somewhat nasty, but they would have been more disturbing if we
knew something - anything - about what makes the lead characters
tick. The fact our heroine has some dark sexual desires
herself could have been a novel angle to play, but it's not adequately
fleshed out. There are many long simulated sex scenes (again, shot not to show any below-the-waist
nudity) and T&A though, and this was clearly made primarily for
titillation purposes. In that regard, it's probably most successful, at
least for roughie, rape and / or fire fetishists.

Best known here in the U.S. as Zoom In: Rape Apartments, this was
issued on DVD by Synapse as Zoom In: Sex Apartments, which is a
more apt title since there's more consensual sex on display than actual
rape. Though the writing is highly uneven, it's otherwise technically
sound, with good photography and music, plus some nice visual / directorial touches. The running
time falls just short of 70 minutes.

There were numerous other Zoom In
or Zoom Up soft-core titles released in Japan around the same time
as part of Nikkatsu's long-running Roman Porno series. The ball started
rolling with the financially successful Zoom Up: Rape Site (1979),
which was also written by Chiho Katsura and starred Miyai. That led
to this one, Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl (1980), Zoom
Up: Sexual Crime Report (1981), Zoom Up: Genuine Look at a Stripper
(1982), Zoom Up: Graduation Photos (1984) and Zoom Up: Special
Masturbation (1986).

In the end Saeko was gangbanged by Takaya and his twin brother on the fire from her nympho imagination. And, she became mentally-disturbed just like the red scarf mentally-disturb homeless lady (she was the same victim was raped by Takaya's twin brother)

PATREON SUPPORT

Updates have unfortunately been few and far between recently but there's a good reason. If you'd like to contribute to keeping this place going and updated more regularly please HEAD RIGHT HERE to offer your support. I have a full explanation on there. Thank you!

Hidden Horror

I contributed an essay on George A. Romero's 'Season of the Witch' (1972) to this wonderful book celebrating overlooked or underrated horror films. Forward by William "Maniac" Lustig and endorsed by Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund. Click on the photo to be redirected to Amazon where you can learn more or purchase a copy.

THE ORLOKS - 2015

(Results from the IMDb user polls. More will be added weekly throughout the year.)